BackPFRDA chairman Yogesh Agarwal resigns
Agarwal's resignation comes ahead of PFRDA being reconstituted as a statutory authority
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New Delhi: Yogesh Agarwal, chairman of the Pension Fund Regulatory Development Authority (PFRDA), resigned on Wednesday, ahead of it being reconstituted as a statutory authority.
The government will start the process of looking for a new chairman for the pension regulator, a senior finance ministry official said.
“We want a fresh start for PFRDA. It should start off as a statutory authority on a clean slate and without any past baggage," said the official, declining to be identified. “We do not want that a finger is raised at the institution in the future."
The government has given Anup Wadhawan, joint secretary in charge of pension and insurance in the department of financial services, additional charge as chairman of the pension regulator, the government said in a notification.
“The (finance) ministry wanted me to resign, so I resigned," Agarwal said, without elaborating.
Agarwal has shared an uneasy relationship with the finance ministry with complaints about his autocratic style of functioning.
In his resignation letter, Agarwal said that since a new Act has come into being and the government would like to reconstitute the PFRDA as a statutory authority, he is resigning.
Asked if he was resigning so PFRDA can be reconstituted as a statutory authority, Agarwal said, “In the past, whenever an interim authority has become a statutory authority, the chairman has continued in the position."
Agarwal was appointed in June 2010 for a five-year tenure when PFRDA was an interim regulator and had no legal backing.
But the passage of the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority Bill, 2011, in September paved the way for PFRDA to get statutory powers. The pension fund regulator will now have punitive powers on the lines of the Securities and Exchange Board of India, the Reserve Bank of India and the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (Irda).
PFRDA, when it will be reconstituted, will have a chairman and three whole-time members. The chairman and the whole-time members will get a tenure of five years and will be eligible for reappointment.
PFRDA can have three part-time members as well, as per the PFRDA Act.
The government has already initiated the process for selecting the whole-time members. It recently appointed a selection committee to fill the posts of whole-time members in PFRDA, keeping Agarwal out of the panel.
The committee included Rajiv Takru, secretary, department of financial services; Arvind Mayaram, secretary, department of economic affairs; Syamal Kumar Sarkar, secretary, department of personnel and training; T.S. Vijayan, chairman of Irda; and S.B. Mathur, former chairman of Life Insurance Corporation of India.
PFRDA administers the National Pension System (NPS) for Union and state government employees and the unorganized sector. Total pension funds under NPS are to the tune of more than ₹ 37,000 crore.
PTI contributed to this story.
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